


like the stars

by triplesalto



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Accidental Apocalypse, Banter, F/M, Flirting, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Robots, ToT: Chocolate Box
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-22 04:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12473516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triplesalto/pseuds/triplesalto
Summary: Missy wasn’t running. She was walking with purpose and speed.





	like the stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tish/gifts).



Missy wasn’t running. She was walking with purpose and speed. 

So her experiments in the deserted laboratories of the Dead City on Carson Eleven-Mark-Two had had certain developments that she hadn’t entirely anticipated. So what! Wasn’t that part of the fun of discovery? This planet had been boring before she arrived, full of mayfly humanoids bustling about their humdrum little lives, obsessed with minute details like food and sleep and the weather. They’d left the mysterious Dead City alone for generations, passing down legends about why no one was ever to enter the forbidden zone. Boring, boring, boring. What was the fun of a creepy ghost town if you weren’t going to investigate the ghosts? 

(All right, most people would have described what Missy was doing as running.)

The laboratories had been eerie, full of dust and audible shadows. Missy had liked them. She’d strolled through the corridors, located the mainframe, and started waking the City. Perhaps it was full of weapons! (Her favourite.) She’d collected a whole library of weapon prototypes in her TARDIS. The universe was such an ingenious, violent place, full of beauty and terror and beautiful terror. Plus, her library made her travels much more fun. Conquering planets was boring if you did it the same way every time – just too simple. It was vastly more amusing to make her plans as complicated, farfetched, and intricate as possible, and then pull them off against all odds. She never used the same weapon twice if she could help it.

From clues scattered around the silent city, Missy had expected to find a sentient computer mainframe that had been shut down and abandoned after it decided it didn’t need to be a slave to humanity any longer. She’d been planning to set it free and make some popcorn as it laid vengeful waste to the dull planet peopled by the descendants of its captors. It’d serve them right. Humanoids should have learned by now that you negotiate with sentient technology, not attempt to enslave or murder it. 

She _hadn’t_ expected to find that the mainframe hadn’t been shut down until after it had already evolved. 

As she rounded a corner in the winding pathways of the City, mentally rehearsing the turns she needed to take to get back to where she’d parked her TARDIS, Missy looked back over her shoulder and swore, letting the Gallifreyan syllables hiss past her lips full of edges. Who knew the fuckers could move that fast? She couldn’t see any visible means of propulsion, but they were definitely gaining. 

Still watching the oncoming horde, she was taken by surprise by the impact as she collided with something solid. Only for a moment, however – Missy was nothing if not adaptable – and by the next second she had leaped up again from the cold cobblestones, yanked the familiar blue door open, and tumbled inside. 

“Hello,” she said, slamming the door shut behind her. _Get through that if you can._ “Nice of you to drop by.”

The Doctor boggled at her. That was really the only way to describe his face, with his mouth hanging slightly open. She grinned at him, and he closed it. “Missy. What are you doing here?”

“Oh, you know me,” Missy said, buffing her nails against her lapel. “Woke up a mainframe, ended up waking up its sentient nosferatu revenant cyborg children. A horde of them, actually.”

The Doctor was staring at her. “You woke up… vampire ghost robots?”

“A new race,” Missy said agreeably. “You like new things, I remember. I don’t recommend bringing one onboard as your pet, though. They’re not housebroken yet.”

“Companion,” the Doctor said, automatically.

Missy shrugged. “Anyway. If you could just drop me at my TARDIS, there’s a good lad.”

Now his eyebrows had come into play. “You’re not going to use the vampire ghost robots to take over this planet?”

“Give me credit for a little sense, Doctor,” Missy said, insulted. “Right now I look like dinner to them. They’ve been held in stasis, starving, for centuries. They don’t want a ruler, they want to feed.”

The Doctor looked at his console readouts, and his gaze was sharper when it came back to her. “Let me guess. They feed on the planet’s inhabitants, and then when they’re sated you offer them an empire of planets with yourself as the empress.”

“You have a good eye for this,” Missy said. “But the position of evil mastermind is already taken. You can’t have it.”

“And _you_ can’t unleash hell on an unsuspecting planet.”

“One,” Missy said, using her fingers to tick off her points, “they started it. Two, I already have. Three, watch me.”

The Doctor sighed. “You can either help me round up the vampire ghost robots and take them to an uninhabited planet, or I can set the wards so you’re confined to the TARDIS while I do it myself. Your choice.”

“You want vampire ghost robots, you make your own. Hands off these, they’re mine.”

“Missy,” the Doctor said, as she walked towards him, her skirts swishing around her legs. “Be serious.”

“While vampire ghost robots beat at your door? Never,” Missy said, and leaned in to kiss him, just to feel the way he startled against her. This regeneration was as skittish as a newborn Reznik, his hearts beating erratically under the hand she spread against his chest. 

She could stun him while he was off his guard, handcuff him to his own TARDIS console, make him watch as the robots devastated the planet, and then strand him at their mercy. She’d enjoy watching him fight his way out of that; he was hot when he was cornered. Definitely not boring.

But his lips parted under hers, ever so slightly, and his mouth tasted like the stars.

It would never do to be predictable, would it? Letting him ‘win’ this one time would mean that in the future he’d never be quite sure whether or not she was on his side. She could definitely use that to her advantage – let him think she was turning _good_ , blech, and he’d never quite get his balance around her ever again. 

Missy was grinning as she pulled away. 

“All right,” she said, tapping him sharply on the nose, “I’ll help you put the genie back in the bottle. On one condition.”

“You’re making conditions for _me_?”

Missy ignored that. “I lend you my local knowledge, and you put that barbed tongue of yours to good use. I haven’t had a proper shag in forever. Can’t get the Gallifreyans these days.”

He was turning purple, whether from the mention of sex or genocide Missy wasn’t quite sure. Probably both. “Missy!”

“Are you going to stand around going ‘Missy!’, or are you going to save the humanoids from the robot apocalypse?” Missy asked, with mild interest. Either worked for her.

She was still standing close enough to feel his annoyed exhale as he sighed. “ _Fine_. If I left you on the TARDIS, you’d probably cause trouble anyway.”

“Of course,” Missy said, and kissed his cheek. “Come along, dear.”

She could feel his eyes on her arse as she strolled towards the door, and bit her lip against a very self-satisfied smile. Things hadn’t quite gone according to plan on Carson Eleven-Mark-Two, but then, Missy always liked it best when things didn’t go quite according to plan. 

“Incoming!” she sang out, and threw the door open, hearing the Doctor swear behind her.

It was shaping up to be quite an excellent day.


End file.
